Sound The Trumpet : Learning to be Used

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154

“Learning to be Used”
by Hugh W. Davidson
June 10th, 2007

There are some people who are extremely good at story telling. All they have to say is, once upon a time and they have you. When I was small my older sister was like that. She could tell the same story every night and I’d listen like it was the first time I ever heard it. I believe that what she has is a natural gift and I also believe that God is the ultimate story teller and yet all of His stories are absolutely true. And He doesn’t tell us about everything but He does tell us everything we need and all this information is in the Bible.

The word Bible simply means the ‘book of books’ and it consists of sixty-six different books. Some of them are just one chapter and there are others that consist of fifty chapters or more and even though they’re all different both in style and content they are all consistent in their message. And here, we find God’s message is told in narrative form, historical content, poetry, proverbs, genealogical records, laws, exhortations, parables, prophetic messages, love stories, warnings and many other styles of writing. And although these are all inspired by God, they are also authored on a human level by different people and from different levels of society. And we have a whole range of writers that go all the way from the extremely intelligent mind of King Solomon who was known as the wisest man who ever lived all the way down the line to a man like Amos who claimed to be nothing more than a shepherd who claims he was called by God to deliver a message.

I was thinking about two of the human authors of several of the books of the Bible, Moses and Paul. And I was astonished as I thought about these two men by the similarities of their backgrounds. Think about them, Moses is credited with writing the first five books of the Old Testament while Paul wrote somewhere around nineteen books of the New Testament. Moses was the adopted son of Pharaoh who we’re told had killed one of the Egyptian guards in an attempt to identify with his Jewish brethren and then he ran for his life but after about twenty years God introduced Himself to Moses out in the desert and then He called him to lead the Jewish nation.

On the other hand, we have Paul who was a self-righteous Pharisee and as he tells the story he had been the one who had held the coats of the men who killed faithful believers like Stephen and I’m sure there were many more as well. He wanted these people dead just as much as the others did but he was the type of person who wouldn’t get his hands dirty to do what he wanted done. And then we are told by Paul himself in the book of Acts that God introduced Himself to him when he was traveling in the desert and then used him to reach all kinds of people both Jews and gentiles.

Both Moses and Paul had been doing their own thing and both of them had been the source of the death of others and yet both of them were called and used of God, not only to direct His people but also to be the authors of portions of the eternal word of God. Listen, God shows us time and time again that He can use anyone, anywhere and anytime if they are willing to be used. And get this, even murderers! No matter how bad we were or how good we think we are, God can use us if we are willing to be used.

Just the other day I was thinking about how God often introduced Himself in the Old Testament by saying, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” And whenever I heard this portion of scripture in the past, I always thought God was trying to establish who He was in the sense of giving Himself historical credibility by using the names of these three great Jewish leaders but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how wrong I was.

For instance, we often think of Abraham as being the great spiritual father of the Jews but we tend to forget that he had lied a few times about his wife in order to save his own skin. And then he developed a carnal plan to have children when God’s plan didn’t work out when he thought it should. And then a few chapters later we find that Isaac did the same thing with his wife to get himself out of a tricky situation. And when we come to the account of Jacob the first thing we read is how he deceived his father to get his brother’s birthright and then he left home to escape his brother’s wrath and takes care of the sheep for his future father-in-law and basically figures out a way that he can steal most of the flock before he leaves. And when he does leave we are told that his wife steals her father’s household gods. And these three Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the forefathers of the religious system of Judaism.

And so, as we read all this, we have to come to the conclusion that God is saying, I’m the God of these three men and that demonstrates that I’m not looking for the best of men but I’m looking for those who are willing to follow Me. And by the type of people I’ve used in the past, anyone can see that it’s Me doing the work and not them.

The fact that God called them and then bragged about being their God tells us that He’s willing to use anyone who is willing to be used. But, before He can use us He has to teach us and before He can teach us we have to know the word of God.

Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13